Totto needed to use the toilet. She knew from her last trip on the Tohoku Line, when the family had traveled to Sendai and Fukushima to look for a place to wait out the war, that there was a lavatory at the end of the car. But would she be able to make it there and back in this crowd?
The woman who had shared her window seat with Totto saw her squirming and asked, “What’s wrong?”
“I need to go pee pee.”
The woman’s cheeks, rosy as an Aomori apple, flushed even brighter.
“I’ll show you how when we get to the next station. Can you hold it until then?”
“Yes.”
“You just do your business out the window while the train is stopped. Don’t worry, I’ll hold your hand.”
What?! Did she say, “out the window”? Totto wasn’t sure she could do something so embarrassing. Quickly deciding that she couldn’t, she stood from her seat and headed for the lavatory.
“I’m sorry. Excuse me. Please let me through.”
Totto weaved through the people seated on the aisle floor. The light on the train was terribly dim and she couldn’t see her feet. “If only we could take this roof off,” she thought. “It would be a hundred times brighter under the moonlight.”
All the passengers were kind and called out to one another before her.
“Hey, let her through.”
“Got a girl coming down.”
One man made way for her and asked, “Are you by yourself?”
Totto was in fact alone, but thought she might get kidnapped if she told the truth. Terrified of never seeing her family again, she lied, “No, my big brother is in the next car over.”
One of Totto’s greatest fears as a child was to get kidnapped. But while the kidnappers in her imagination wore red capes, none of the people on the overnight train were dressed in anything quite so fashionable.
At long last, she made it to the lavatory. But one look was all it took to drain her of hope. The door was wide open and every inch in front of it and within was crammed with people. She simply couldn’t bring herself to say, “I’m sorry. I need to use the facility. Can you please move?” There was even a man squeezed between the toilet and the wall.
This won’t do, she thought, and returned to her seat, repeating “I’m sorry” and “Excuse me” all over again.
“Were you able to go?” the kind woman asked.
“No. It was full of people.”
“What did I tell ya?” The woman grinned.
✦ ✦ ✦
A few minutes later, the train pulled into another station.
The woman shot up from her seat, thrust the window open, pulled down her monpe work trousers and stuck her bare behind out into the open air.
“See? This is how you do it.”
Hissssssss.
Totto heard a forceful spraying sound out in the darkness. From inside the train car, the woman’s pale thighs appeared to glow softly in the moonlight. Her knees were right next to Totto’s face. As Totto sat stunned, the woman quickly pulled her trousers back up. It all happened in the blink of an eye.
“No one can see you in the dark,” she reassured, nudging Totto’s head out of the window. Totto looked to the left and to the right and spotted numerous round white protrusions poking out from the side of the train.
“We don’t stop for very long at each station, so you’ll have to try it at the next one.”
This was no time to be embarrassed or ashamed. Not a soul would care if Totto did her business out of the window. She wouldn’t be scolded for it. In fact, trying to hold it in only to have an accident inside the train would certainly cause much more trouble.
When the train pulled into the next stop, the woman wordlessly opened the glass and moved over so Totto could sit by the window. Totto pulled down her monpe and stuck her rear outside. The woman held her hand all the while so she wouldn’t fall through. Totto clutched the window frame tightly with her other hand.
A chilly breeze grazed her bottom.
Hissssssss.
She let loose and heard the spray hit the train wall. No one but the woman holding on to Totto so much as looked at her.
For the first time in her life, Totto relieved herself outside of a bathroom. But she wasn’t embarrassed in the least.
Imagine, peeing from the window! She had to tell Mother about it tomorrow!
Her family would be arriving in Shiriuchi in the morning. She wondered where they were at this very moment. Was Noriaki-chan being a good boy? Was Mari-chan crying?
As such thoughts circled in her mind, Totto drifted off into a deep sleep.